The Missing Picture - film review

Rithy Panh’s fey, sweeping documentary-cum-essay explores the cruelty of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge with the use of wooden dolls

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Friday 3 January 2014 10:07 BST

Rithy Panh uses wooden figures to portray the events and cruelty that took place during Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, especially towards intellectuals, is drained of complexity in Rithy Panh’s fey, sweeping documentary-cum-essay. “There were no joyful cries...I was there,” he says of the 1975 invasion of Phnom Penh, as if he had a bird’s-eye view of all the events that took place that day.

A fascinating subject, the cruelty of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, especially towards intellectuals, is drained of complexity in Rithy Panh’s fey, sweeping documentary-cum-essay. “There were no joyful cries... I was there,” he says of the 1975 invasion of Phnom Penh, as if he had a bird’s-eye view of all the events that took place that day.

I wanted to know more about his family, who were killed in rural work camps, but our tour guide is too in love with abstraction (“soon there will be no more love”) to make his horrendous experiences come alive. On the other hand, the wooden dolls he uses to reconstruct events and the soundtrack flood us with emotion.

Both infuriating and haunting, The Missing Picture leaves us desperate for other testimonies. Panh’s vision is so tantalisingly incomplete.